Delivery of small fluid volumes in biomedical and research activities can be an important part of medical treatments or in performing various experimental routines. In particular, delivery of small amounts of fluid in highly repeatable volumes can be useful for a variety of applications, such as intravenous delivery of medicaments or other biologically active materials for treatment of a patient.
A number of devices are currently used to deliver fluids in medical applications. However, many current devices also suffer from various drawbacks such as expense, lack of precision, inconvenience, and others. For example, peristaltic pumps can suffer from a lack of precision due to the tube materials taking a set such that delivery volumes change over time with constant pump revolutions or strokes. Further, peristaltic pumps typically require highly precise tube lumen and actuator mechanisms which can increase manufacturing costs. On the other hand, conventional IV bags are hung from a stand and do not stand on their own. This can result in some degree of inconvenience during use and can make marking or coding of delivery bags with written labels or smart chips difficult. Further, precision pumps also generally require sophisticated software and hardware control to effectively deliver fluids as designed. A steady increase in medical costs and drawbacks of currently available devices make improvements in this area of technology desirable.